What are you making? I almost blurt out but stop, not wanting to startle her, cause a backstitch or jog in that straight seam. Besides, a white slip is all she’s got on. I just watch, like the glass bottle and gold jewelry box on her bureau, the hanging picture, peering over her shoulder. The wall’s warm orange geometry halos and echoes the pointing of her arms, fingers, and nose to the zhu-zhu-zhuing of the pogoing needle. I often found my mother sitting at her beige Singer in the dark corner of her bedroom, back to the door, under a hanging light. Her solace? Wool, cotton, Ultrasuede, linen, snaps, buttons, hooks, and zippers. What’s for dinner? I’d interrupt. Sometimes she’d answer, I don’t know. Then go back to her meditation, like the girl, making herself that pale-pink dress, billowing against the window, ready to join the sky.
Aaron Caycedo-Kimura
Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is a writer, visual artist, and teacher. He is the author of two poetry books: the full-length collection Common Grace (Beacon Press, 2022) and Ubasute, winner of the 2020 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. His honors include a MacDowell Fellowship, a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry, and a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Literature. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies, including Beloit Poetry Journal, The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, RHINO, Salamander, Cave Wall, and Consequence. Caycedo-Kimura earned his MFA from Boston University and teaches creative writing at Trinity College. Find him on online: aaroncaycedokimura.com; @aaroncaycedokimura (IG); @AaronCaycedoKimuraArt (FB); @aaroncaycedokimura.bsky.social (Blsky).
